Microsoft Research, National Center for Women & Information Technology, Association for Computing Machinery Council on Women, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Women in Engineering, Microsoft Imagine Cup and Skype are pleased to support the first annual International Women’s Hackathon.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that by 2018 there will be 1.4 million open technology jobs in the United States and, at the current rate of students graduating with degrees in computer science, we will fill only 29 percent of those openings with women graduates in computer and information science. These predictions are all the more dispiriting when you realize that the latest advances in improving healthcare, protecting the environment, and upgrading manufacturing have come from technological innovations. We believe that no other field offers as much opportunity for students and society as computer science does.

We would like to support and pilot a grounds up crowdsourcing effort to empower young women leaders in computer science to support more young women across university campuses around the world to become producers of future innovations in technology.  We want every woman to have a fun safe environment in which to explore computing and help solve challenges in the world today.  We have created the attached kit to help you organize your local event and connect to all the International events.  You get to determine how you want to organize your local hackathon it can be as small as 16 women to as large as hundreds, use this kit as a guide to help you but you get to decide how best you want to launch your local hackathon.  Keep it simple, fun and we look forward to learn from you so we can make this an annual event.  We hope you will join us! More information visit: http://research.microsoft.com/womens-hackathon2013   or email ranej@microsoft.com rules and regulations will be available on the website on January 25th.